


Tethered

by Lissadiane



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Baby shield agent Clint, Brainwashed Bucky, M/M, Selkies, WinterHawk Big Bang, but with selkies, canon adjacent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:14:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26480215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lissadiane/pseuds/Lissadiane
Summary: When Clint realizes the Winter Soldier is stalking him, he runs as far and fast as he can. He doesn't expect to survive it if the world's best assassin has been sent to kill him, but fuck it if anyone expects him to let Natasha or anyone else be collateral damage.He doesn't expect the Soldier to imprint on him like a duckling - a duckling whose eyes glow like an animal's in the dark, who swims like a dolphin, who catches fish with his bare hands, and who seems more at home in the ocean than he does on land.A selkie AU.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 61
Kudos: 487
Collections: Winterhawk Big Bang 2020





	Tethered

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to so many people who held my hand through this, you're all the best and I'm immeasurably grateful. So many people checked it for grammar problems, checked it for plot problems and listened to me moan about it.
> 
> Thank you to [ SSLeif](https://do-what-the-knight-tells-you.tumblr.com/) for the amazing art! It fits this fic perfectly and I love it. And thank you to the WHBB mods for once again putting in so much work for such a fun event.

When Clint first breathes in the thick, humid air, the sharp scent of it lingers on his tongue and his memory, but it takes a moment to place it.

He’s deep inside a Hydra stronghold in the middle of the desert and there’s absolutely no reason to be breathing in sea salt and mist, but here he is. Surrounded on all sides by concrete slick with mildew from the humidity that’s crushing in on him on all sides, the ground slippery with stagnant puddles fed by moisture running down the walls in slow, heavy drops. It should smell of mold and mildew, of rot and wet, but instead, every time he breathes… all he tastes on the back of his tongue is sea salt and fresh, wild ocean air.

“Hey, Nat?” he says into his comms, shining his flashlight into the corners of the cavernous room searching for threats but pretty sure he’s not going to find any. This room has felt untouched since he nearly busted his shoulder shoving the door open. “Find anything?”

“A few things,” she says, humming. “You?”

“Not sure.”

The first time Clint saw the ocean, he was mesmerized. He’d only been with the circus for six months before they’d made their way to San Diego, running from the frost and changing leaves and the law that blamed them for a string of petty crime they may or may not have been involved with. 

They’d set up camp outside the city, intending to lay low, and Barney and Clint had sneaked away as soon as their chores were managed to find their way to the nearest rocky beach.

And Clint had just stood there on the cliffs, staring out at the ocean, taking deep, bracing breaths and still feeling like he couldn’t fill his lungs enough. All he’d heard was the crashing waves and the distant sound of seals barking on the beach below.

The water had glittered like diamonds and Clint felt tiny standing there, but for the first time in his life, he didn’t mind the feeling. He felt small but like he was a piece of something bigger, something brighter, something that shone like diamonds and seemed a million times more valuable than the rocks he and Barney and the other pickpockets in the circus found in rich people’s pockets.

That sensation of breathing in the ocean air and breathing out the weight of the world lingered in his memory and now, standing in this slimy, rotten room that smells of sea salt and wild things, he can’t help but feel it again. Like a puzzle piece about to slide into the final place and complete a picture.

Like the room itself is holding its breath and waiting for something.

It’s eerie and he doesn’t quite like it, but Clint shrugs off the feeling of being watched and moves further into the room. The door had been hidden, practically blending into the concrete wall, overgrown with mildew, which meant either it held hidden treasures -- or nothing at all.

It’s a wide open room and he doesn’t like that -- the walls are so far apart that his light doesn’t hit them, getting swallowed up in the shadows instead, which makes it seem like the room could go on forever. His footsteps echo along with the dripping water and Clint is about to give up on this room when his light finally lands on something other than spiders and mold.

It’s an iron lockbox and it isn’t even locked. It looks old, forgotten, but even though every inch of wall and floor in this room is growing with some sort of slick algae or mold, the box is pristine. There is no hint of any sort of growth, no rust, no spider webs, no lock.

If this were an Indiana Jones movie, Clint knows, he’d touch that box and the room would start shaking and falling in on itself and he’d have to run for his life and hope to avoid the caving in ruins, the giant boulders, the pits of vipers and the backstabbing colleagues.

So when he touches the box with just his fingertips and nothing happens, it’s a little bit anticlimactic.

The hinges don’t even squeak as he swings the lockbox open, and Clint’s expectations are low -- if it was something valuable, surely they’d have locked the goddamn box. But even with his low expectations, he’s disappointed with what he finds.

It’s a scrap of fabric -- of fur. He touches it tentatively at first, but the fur is thick and feels almost alive, soft under his hand. He can’t tell what sort of animal it might be from and Clint fucking hates fur so he drops the lid of the box shut and turns to go. 

But the fur has been carefully folded and stored here, in an iron box in a forgotten room. And his fingertips still seem to tingle where he touched it. 

And this Hydra stronghold had been such a closely guarded secret, and a heavily guarded one at that. They’d come here expecting to find something of value and Clint would be the first to admit he doesn’t know the first goddamn thing about the mystical shit Hydra got up to in their super secret strongholds.

So he picks up the box reluctantly, shoves it into his backpack and leaves the room. There are other rooms to check, ones that probably contain a multitude of high tech Hydra weapons and by the time he catches up with Nat for extraction, Clint has forgotten all about the strange box and the stranger fur.

When he gets back to his place in Bed-Stuy, he shoves his backpack under the bed and collapses on top of it, exhausted, and sleeps like the dead.

He dreams of dark shadows and oily puddles pooling on broken concrete, reflecting the moody sky until running feet crack them to pieces. He dreams of being chased through a city he doesn’t recognize, in a time he’s never seen before, desperate and drowning and clawing at his own face, his arms, his chest but unable to find his way to the surface to take a breath.

He wakes up to a crack of thunder and a flash of lightning and could have sworn, for half a second, someone was standing on the fire escape outside his window, peering in.

There’s nothing there when he turns on the light.

*

Clint doesn’t have the greatest situational awareness when he hasn’t got his bow in his hands, but it just so happens that he spends a great deal of his next three missions staking out roof tops and lining up killer shots.

So he knows he’s being watched.

He tries to shake it off -- tries to tell himself it’s anxiety, it’s the wind, it’s that one eyed pigeon just on the edge of his line of sight, it’s his imagination, but the sensation lingers.

And the thing is, usually, once he catches on to the fact that he’s being watched or followed or whatever, Clint is pretty good at figuring out who it is and whether they’re a threat. 

But this time, it’s just that creepy crawly feeling of eyes on him.

He feels it on his very next mission, when he’s watching Nat’s back as she infiltrates a lesser known Hydra compound that had been on the list Fury had given them. He feels it on the mission after, as he waits to make the killing shot on a Hydra operative that’s high up enough in the chain of command that his death is worth the blood it leaves on Clint’s hands. There was a time when he’d thought joining SHIELD meant leaving his killer-for-hire days behind, but he’s a hell of a lot less naive these days.

And he feels it on the third mission, halfway around the world, wet to the bone in a vicious thunderstorm, his bowstring slick with pouring rain and his fingers cold and clumsy with it.

He doesn’t miss the shot, taking out the Hydra goon Nat had lured out of hiding and into the street with an easy shot that catches him right between the eyes. He’s dead before the arrow’s done puncturing his skull and Clint is up and looking around before the body hits the ground.

It’s that same feeling and he grabs another arrow, holding it ready, and searches the thick shadows.

He’s always had better eyesight than most and he doesn’t see a fucking thing.

This time, though, Natasha notices, handing him his arrow as she silently joins him on the roof. She studies the surrounding rooftops for a moment before turning to study him, squinting in the rain and the dark.

“You seem tired,” she says, and he is. He doesn’t know if it’s paranoia or if he’s got a legit reason to be nervous and he spins the arrow between his fingers.

“Sleeping’s been a bitch lately,” he confesses because it’s simple enough, and mostly true.

“Nightmares?”

He finally turns to look at her, rolling his eyes. “My SHIELD-mandated therapist says I don’t have to discuss my recovery with you,” he says, but he’s only saying it to make her smile. She knows his thoughts on his SHIELD-mandated therapist, who he’s been seeing since that shit-show with Loki.

“Well, I beg your pardon,” she says, but she smooths his wet hair back off his forehead and says, “I’m going to ask Coulson for a few day’s vacation. We can go somewhere warm. Sit on a beach. I’ll let you rub oil on my back if you ask nicely.”

He laughs, tucking his arrow away and says, “I’m fine, Nat.” He follows her towards the fire escape, considering. “But maybe a trip to the beach would be alright. Nothing a few days beside the ocean sipping mai tais out of a coconut won’t solve.”

He can see a bit of the tension bleed out of her shoulders with relief -- she always worries a bit too much about him, especially after Loki. He’s agreeing to the break more for her benefit than his.

Though he’s not gonna turn down a mai tai or two.

*

They end up on Tony’s island because it’s private and easy and they don’t need international air traffic clearance to land there. It distinctly lowers Clint’s chances of hooking up with a hot local or two because the only people on the island are staff and Clint’s not a scumbag who’s gonna try seducing anyone on Tony’s payroll.

But maybe a few days of rest and relaxation without the added pressure of finding a hookup will help. He _is_ feeling tired and anxious and restless and now that he’s become aware of that feeling of being watched, he’s feeling it _all the time_.

But there’s no way anyone without proper security clearance is getting on Tony’s private island, so whoever it is -- if it’s anyone at all and not some left over Loki shadow -- can’t follow him here.

He relaxes by slow degrees, coaxed by the rolling waves on the beach, matching his breathing to the rhythm of them.

And the first day is perfect.

He drinks mai tais. He lets Nat cajole him into letting her put SPF 50 on his back, shoulders and the tip of his nose. He swims in the surf and then struts out of the water to his towel like the sexiest Bond girl, living out all his beach-side fantasies as Nat watches judgingly over her sunglasses and her gossip magazine. He sprawls on his towel and bakes in the sun and doesn’t feel that creeping sense of being watched because he’s safe here, surrounded by sand and water and staff with military-grade security clearances.

He can finally relax.

And he does.

Until his eyes fly open in the middle of the night and he swears, for one stupid, frantic moment, that the shadows of swaying palms on the wall near the sliding balcony door are thicker and shaped like something human.

He can’t _hear_ anything because he’d been sleeping with his hearing aids in out of anxiety for weeks now and tonight he’d finally relaxed enough to take them off, but he scrambles for his aids with one hand and his phone with the other and by the time he gets his flashlight app on and his aids in his ears, he’s alone and the shadows are just shadows and he’s struggling to remember to breathe.

“Just palm trees,” he says to himself, but his hands are trembling as he gets out of bed, going to the balcony door to scan the beach below. There’s no one there and if there was, he’d be able to see them in the bright light of the nearly full moon.

And it’s only after he closes the door and crawls back into bed that Clint distinctly remembers closing the balcony door before climbing into bed the first time.

He’s still awake and shaken when the sun starts to rise hours later.

*

“You alright?” Natasha asks, late the next afternoon. They’re on a beach, stretched out on fluffy towels with a higher thread count than anything in Clint’s apartment, and the sun is bright and hot. He can feel his shoulders burning and going tight and he’s probably a mess of freckles by now. 

“We’re on Stark’s hedonistic island with nothing to do but sit around and drink and escape the nightmare of daily existence,” Clint says. “What could possibly be wrong?”

“You’re fidgeting. You’re jumpy. You’ve been jumpy for days.” She tips her sunglasses down to her nose to look at him for a moment and then says, “You need me to put in a call to that SHIELD-mandated therapist Coulson’s always talking about?”

“This beach is all the therapy I need,” Clint tells her, pretending to settle in, closing his eyes like he’s actually going to fall asleep.

Like he isn’t just as jumpy and paranoid as she said.

The thing is… Clint’s usually good at knowing when there are threats closing in. And it’s not really paranoid if they really are out to get him and he just. He feels like maybe they are.

But maybe he’s just been out in the field too long.

So he lets out a tight breath and actually tries to fall asleep and of course it doesn’t work. But he tries his best for a few hours before giving up and setting off for a walk to burn off his nervous energy.

The island is beautiful. Of course it is. The sand is soft and the ocean washes over it with a whisper, the palm trees are swaying, the sun is hot, the gardens and grounds are perfectly manicured and the staff are kind and accommodating. The food is plentiful and delicious. And the security measures are top notch.

It’s Tony Stark’s private island. Everyone here is vetted with the highest possible clearance level.

But Clint’s fingers are itching for his bow.

So he walks the perimeter of the island, staring out at the glittering ocean and breathing in the salt-sharp air, and thinking about San Diego and standing on a beach like this with his brother and feeling small and rooted to the spot in a way he never felt before.

Here, he feels exposed.

The sightlines are terrible. An assassin could be hiding in the greenery or on the roof or around the corner or down the endless expanse of sand.

Except it’s a motherfucking private island. There’s no way --

He reacts to the glint of sunlight on metal before he even has time to register it in the distance, dropping into the flimsy shelter of a grass-woven hut. It’s empty, probably used as a bar for beach parties, but Clint’s just glad there aren’t any innocent bystanders inside it to worry about. Last thing he needs out here is a civilian to protect when all he’s got is his obnoxiously-patterned swim trunks to protect himself with.

A bullet would cut right through the grass walls of this hut but luckily, no one shoots and Clint takes advantage of the shade to squint down the beach. When the attack doesn’t come, he starts to doubt himself -- any decent assassin would’ve had plenty of opportunity and he’d like to think an assassin would have to be pretty good to track him here.

What if it was just a staff member? A trick of the light? Sun reflecting off the water? What if--

He sees the shadow dart out of the shelter of a rocky outcropping moments later, disappearing down the beach, and Clint forgets his plan to stay safe and hidden and takes off down the sand after it.

A staff member wouldn’t run or hide.

By the time he gets down to the outcropping, though, the shadow is gone.

And Clint starts to think maybe it’s not all in his head. 

*

He doesn’t sleep that night. 

He keeps all the windows wide open, rearranges the furniture so the sightlines are beautiful and impossible for an assassin to resist. He positions himself on the couch in front of the balcony, his bow beside him as he starts going through his arrows, checking fletchings and tips, testing balance. 

He knows every arrow is perfect but it gives him something to do with his hands, a way to keep them from shaking as he waits for his shadow to show himself.

A storm rolls in off the Pacific, cracking open the moody sky with forked lightning and crashing waves and Clint thinks his shadow must’ve sought shelter somewhere.

He goes out onto the balcony to search the grounds, instantly drenched in rain. At first, he thinks it’s clear -- no one is out there, not in a storm like this.

And then lightning flashes and the garden is illuminated in stark, sharp shades of white and silver.

And there, standing in the rain below, staring up at Clint’s window and practically motionless, is the shadow from the beach.

His face is pale, hair slicked back like a seal, eyes wide and dark, unblinking. He’s somehow broad and sleek at the same time, clothing plastered to his wide shoulders, his heavily muscled chest, stomach, thighs. He holds himself tightly coiled, all carefully controlled strength.

And his left arm glitters, wet with rain and made of interlocking metal plates.

Clint is so, so fucked. He knows who that is.

And if the Winter Soldier has been sent to bring him down, Clint knows he doesn’t stand a chance.

*

Clint runs. He knows the only thing he can do at this point is damage control and if the Winter Soldier can infiltrate Tony’s private island, nowhere is safe.

So he’s not running from the Soldier. He’s running from Natasha.

If he’s gonna die, he’s not letting her be collateral damage.

He uses every trick he knows -- every trick she taught him. He leaves half a dozen false trails, hops planes going in every direction imaginable before doubling back, buys and ditches countless passports and by the time he stops running, it’s been three weeks and all he’s got left is his beat up backpack and the ratty clothes he’s wearing. He ditches his stolen car in a parking garage, hoping it’ll find its way home, and hitchhikes into the nearest town.

The air is thick and humid, heavy with salt and mist blowing up off the moody ocean, crashing against the rocky coast. His plane had landed a few hours away and it had been instinct, driving as far as he could until he literally ran out of land and Clint barely remembers which country he’s in.

All he knows is that if he’s lost himself, there’s a chance Natasha won’t be able to find him. And when the Soldier comes for him again -- because Clint knows he’ll never outrun the Winter Soldier -- Clint will do his best to make it out of the confrontation alive.

But he’s a realist.

So he catches a ride into town, staring out over the water as they drive. There are dark, angry clouds boiling up over the foaming sea, distant flashes of lightning. Another storm.

He finds an inn willing to take American cash and accept his fake name without a word. The room is small but cozy and he tosses his backpack on the narrow bed and then goes to find somewhere to exchange his money and hopefully find some food.

The streets are made of cobblestones, lined with old stone buildings leaning drunkenly against each other and the voices he hears are speaking English, which is a relief. It takes him a while but he guesses their accents are probably Welsh.

It’s late and the bank is closed but he finds a pub and orders some dinner and a beer and finds a dark table to sit at. There’s live music, something lively with a fiddle, and the place is decently busy, which makes it easier to disappear. He’s got a stolen credit card that should cover the bill and he silently thanks whoever the card belongs to as he finishes his meal.

The storm breaks with a sharp crack of thunder as he settles the bill and the lights flicker. He ducks out of the pub and into the cold rain and wind blowing in off the ocean, hunching his shoulders against it as he makes his way back to the inn, leftovers wrapped up in his pocket.

He’s exhausted, cold, wet and miserable, and he’s already resigned to the fact that at any moment, the Soldier will find him and finish what he started.

Still, he should have been more aware. He should have seen it coming. 

He’s just… He’s so goddamn tired.

So when the Soldier appears out of the shadows, standing silently in front of him, Clint slides to a stop on the slick cobblestones and stares. He’s got a knife in his pocket and he grabs it but he’s not sure it’ll do much good.

“Go on then,” he says, spinning his knife and sinking low, into a fighting stance. “Let’s get this over with.”

The Soldier just stares, silent and still, eyes still dark. His face is slick, rain water running from his jaw, and he slowly cocks his head, studying Clint like he doesn’t understand him at all.

Fuck it, Clint decides. Fuck this.

He lunges forward, going for the Soldier’s throat with his knife, slamming him back into the alley and up against the rough stone wall. He can feel the layers upon layers of muscle under the Soldier’s wet clothes, can feel the way he tenses up, an instinctive need to defend himself that the Soldier somehow resists. The Soldier lets himself be shoved up against the wall, head crashing into the stone as he tips his head back, bearing his throat.

Clint freezes, blade pressed to the Soldier’s neck, body pinning him there against the wall, and the Soldier isn’t moving at all -- hell, he’s barely breathing. And Clint doesn’t know what he was expecting -- a long-range bullet to the brain, unexpected but quick, with a grace Clint _knows_ the Soldier is capable of, maybe.

A knife in the back, possibly.

Something quick and brutal, probably.

So he doesn’t know what to do with this. With a Soldier who’s compliant and still and watching Clint carefully, resigned, like he’s the one expecting an execution.

He hesitates and the Soldier closes his eyes against the driving rain, licking it off his lips. He exhales, careful, and says, voice hoarse and rough like gravel, “Ready to comply.”

“What the _fuck_ ,” Clint yelps, jerking back and dropping his knife. He’d blame it on the rain and the chill in his fingers but the truth is, he’s never been much for executions and this feels too much like what Barney asked him to do, way back before he got kicked out of the circus for refusing the order.

He doesn’t slaughter people who calmly wait for it. Not even world-famous ghost assassins.

There’s a long moment then, silence broken only by the crashing ocean waves down the street and the rolling thunder. The Soldier is staring at him, eyes dark and wide and unblinking, and Clint is wondering if he should run, if he should grab his knife, if this is some sort of nightmare.

Finally, the Soldier swallows and cocks his head and says, “Is there a mission?”

“You tell me,” Clint says, because he thought he was the mission.

The Soldier blinks.

He doesn’t look like a notorious assassin rumoured to be responsible for countless impossible assassinations spanning the past fifty years. Not here, like this. He looks pale and younger than he should and just a little bit lost.

And he’s looking at Clint like he thinks Clint might be the one to point him in the right direction and Clint doesn’t even know which goddamn country he’s in.

Clint keeps his distance, wiping the rain out of his eyes and watching for any hint of movement or threat. The Soldier just stands there, docile and confused and wet. And maybe hungry.

Rubbing the back of his neck, Clint looks down the alley and up at the stormy sky and then back at the Soldier and says, “You hungry?” He pulls his squashed box of leftovers out of his pocket and the Soldier licks his lips again but doesn’t reply.

“If you want it,” Clint says. “C’mon.”

And then he does the stupidest thing he’s done in his entire life and grabs his knife, shoves it in his pocket, and turns his back on the Winter Soldier, walking out of the alley.

After a few moments, he hears the Soldier’s footsteps behind him, following him home like a lost puppy.

Natasha is gonna kill him.

*

The Soldier stands awkwardly in the doorway, dripping water and mud on the carpet and looking like he doesn’t know what to do with his bulk in such a small space. Clint busies himself, taking off his sweater and hanging it to dry, grabbing clean clothes, running a towel through his wet hair and finally sitting down on the bed as far from the door as he can get. He left the leftovers on the table by the door and he’s seen the way the Soldier keeps darting desperate glances at the food.

“Shoes off,” Clint says finally, and the Soldier scrambles to obey.

It makes something awkward and uncomfortable coil in Clint’s gut but he says, carefully, “Sit at the table. Eat. It’s fine.”

The Soldier shoots him a quick look but obeys quickly, efficiently, polishing off the leftover meat pie in a few bites before looking up. Waiting for another mission.

Clint doesn’t understand. But he’s so fucking tired. And somehow, the Soldier has imprinted on him and doesn’t seem to be a threat.

Hell, if he decides to become a threat, there’s not much Clint can do about it anyway. So he says, “You should sleep -- do you sleep? I’m going to sleep.”

And he rolls over on the narrow bed and closes his eyes and, miraculously, falls asleep.

*

He wakes up 12 hours later and the Soldier is back in his position at the doorway, looking strained and exhausted and pale but alert. Keeping watch.

It’s too goddamn early for this and Clint’s thoughts are fragmented, broken. He needs coffee. And then he needs answers.

But for now, he says -- probably more harshly than necessary -- “I thought I told you to sleep.”

The Soldier’s eyes flash to Clint’s face and Clint sees him swallow, brace himself, before he says, “Waiting on extraction, and then debrief and processing, and then cryo. Sleep isn’t necessary or efficient or --”

“Jesus,” Clint groans. “Fuck. Just. Go to sleep. I’m getting coffee. You better be sleeping when I get back.”

He stumbles into his damp jeans and out of the small room and thinks maybe -- possibly -- the Soldier will be gone when he gets back and this nightmare will be over.

He gets two coffees and four pastries just in case, though, and when he gets back, the Soldier is curled up on the floor against the far wall, sleeping like the dead.

He doesn’t wake when Clint closes and locks the door. He doesn’t wake when Clint drops the blanket over him. So Clint carefully puts his coffee and pastries aside, downs his own, and goes to shower.

*

The Soldier wakes up four hours later. To be fair, Clint figured he’d probably sleep for the entire day and he’s stocked up accordingly with cold pizza, bags of chips, chocolate, candy and beer. 

He’s also made himself cozy on the couch and turned on the tiny TV that only gets three channels, and he’s knee deep in a documentary on the mating habits of Australian marsupials when the Soldier finally wakes.

When he does, it’s quick and jarring, his deep breathing faltering into something shallow and panicky for a few moments before he’s up and palming a sharp knife, slipping into a fighting stance and seeming mere seconds away from slaughtering Clint the way he should have the night before.

Clint just stares at him and swallows a mouthful of chips and waits for the Soldier to blink the sleep-induced panic out of his eyes.

They’re very pretty eyes.

Clint shoves another mouthful of chips into his mouth and chews obnoxiously loudly and does his best to look non-threatening. He’s got chip crumbs on his naked chest and he’s only wearing his underwear so it shouldn’t be hard.

The Soldier finally shakes off the nightmare, looks around like a caged animal, and says, “Ready to comply.”

“Comply with what?” Clint asks him. “You wanna watch this documentary with me? I’m pretty sure they’re gonna talk about kangaroos fucking soon. I mean, it’s Australian marsupials. They’ve gotta.”

The Soldier blinks and yawns and then looks startled, like he’s never yawned before, and Clint has gotta stop rescuing every stray puppy that walks into his path. It’s pathological.

“Or there’s food,” Clint says and the Soldier’s gaze sharpens.

“I don’t require it,” he says. “The body is functioning at 93 percent efficiency and --”

“So who are you?” Clint interrupts, because he’s eaten far too much junk food today to be feeling this nauseated.

The Soldier looks deeply, deeply uncomfortable. “Sergeant,” he says, almost blankly. “32557038.” And then he repeats it.

He’s halfway through saying it for a third time when Clint interrupts almost desperately. “No. No, I don’t know what that is. Who… who is the Winter Soldier?”

The Soldier looks at him, still carefully blank, and says, “The Asset.”

“Asset,” Clint echoes. He shoves his mouth full of chips and chews, a little manic. “Right. Right. Hey, here, eat -- eat this.” He throws a bag of chips at him and the Soldier catches them easily with one hand and then stares at them, confused. It’s better than looking like a goddamn robot. “It’s -- it’s the mission,” Clint says, faltering a little. “Eat the chips. And the pizza. Have a beer. Eat until you’re full. Or until the… the body is at 100 percent.”

The Soldier dutifully opens the chips and eats one, looking a little skeptical. Soon enough, he’s inhaling them faster than Clint, even.

Clint waits until his mouth is full to ask, “So, whose asset are you?”

While the Soldier works on swallowing, Clint finishes his beer, grabs another for himself, and tosses one to the Soldier too. He’s halfway through gulping his down when the Soldier says blankly, “Hydra.”

Clint nearly asphyxiates on his goddamn beer.

Of course it’s Hydra. Of course. The Winter Soldier has to be someone’s asset and why not Hydra? It makes sense. Most of the assassinations credited to the Soldier had to have benefited Hydra.

“Did they send you to kill me?” he asks. “Is that your mission?”

“Not this time,” the Soldier says quietly, studying the can of beer like he’s never seen one before.

“This time?” Clint says, and it comes out a little squeaker than he’d meant.

“Clint Barton,” the Soldier recites, still staring at the beer, “AKA Hawkeye. World’s Greatest Marksman. Expert proficiency with a bow and long-range weaponry. Likes the high ground. Weaknesses include Natasha Romanov, partial hearing loss, and a tendency to be overly compassionate towards wounded civilians and animals. Member of the Avengers.” He looks up, still quiet, still curled up in the corner, and adds quietly, “The mission was to eliminate all Avengers, particularly Captain America and Iron Man.”

“And what’s your mission now?” Clint asks him, his mind racing as he tries to figure out if the Soldier is playing a long game here -- if he’s appealing to Clint’s compassion, putting a wounded animal in his path.

“Eat until I’m full,” the Soldier says, still quiet. “Or until the body is 100 percent.” He cracks open the beer and takes a cautious sip.

“Right,” Clint says faintly. “Okay.”

He turns back to the TV. Kangaroos are fucking and he’s too distracted even to notice.

*

“Mission complete,” the Soldier says, some time later, after the pizza is gone and so are three more cans of beer. “I think.”

Clint looks at him. He’s moved up off the floor at Clint’s coaxing and now he’s sitting in the tiny chair near the door, eyeing the pile of junk food like he’s not sure he’s done eating yet, despite looking a little ill.

“Didn’t Hydra feed you?” Clint asks, because he’s running out of things to say.

“Unnecessary,” the Soldier tells him. “Required nutrients were provided intravenously during recalibration and cryo. The body--”

“What are you doing here?” Clint asks, growing desperate.

“Waiting for a mission,” the Soldier tells him, cocking his head again like he’s confused.

“I don’t have a mission,” Clint tells him. “If there isn’t a mission -- what happens when there isn’t a mission?”

“Recalibration,” the Soldier tells him, shutting down. “Cryostasis to recover optimum --”

“No,” Clint snaps. “No. If you could have anything at all… What do you -- what do you _want_?”

“Want,” the Soldier echoes, almost blank again, but he turns his head, staring at the pile of junk food on the table, and Clint’s backpack behind it. “Want is not relevant to the mission,” he says, and his voice has gone soft and yearning.

Clint is in so far over his head. “But if it was,” he says. “If it was relevant. If the mission was to tell me what you want, what would you tell me?”

The Soldier turns to look at him again, slowly, and there’s something different, something almost otherworldly about his face now. It’s a little too sharp and a little too pale. His eyes are too dark and wide.

“I want,” he says, wistful. He closes his eyes and tips his head, like he’s listening to something Clint can’t hear. “To see the water.”

“The water,” Clint echoes, confused. He turns to look at the window. It’s a gray and moody day but the rain has stopped at least. Down the street, the ocean still heaves angrily against the rocky coast. 

Clint blinks. “You want to go to the _beach_?” he asks.

The Soldier just watches him expectantly.

So Clint takes him to the beach.

*

The jagged rocks give way to a beach made up of sharp, loose stones just outside of town. It’s a cold, colourless day and the air is sharp with sea water. Clint hunches his shoulders and shoves his hands deep inside his hoodie as he picks his way carefully over the slick stones.

The Soldier moves like it’s easy, like he doesn’t feel the cold, like the only thing that matters is getting to the water as quickly as possible.

Clint opens his mouth to warn the Soldier when he gets too close because the rocks are treacherous and slippery and the water is icy cold, but before he can say anything at all, the Soldier is walking into the water like it doesn’t hurt -- like it doesn’t make it impossible to breathe.

Clint knows what cold like that feels like. The coldest he’s ever been was when he was seven years old and he still vividly remembers the way the air was punched clear out of his chest when he fell through the ice on the lake he and Barney were skating on.

But the Soldier doesn’t slow.

Hell, maybe he can’t feel the cold. Maybe that’s why they called him the Winter Soldier.

So Clint finds a large, flat rock to sit on, curls up and hugs his knees close to still his shivering, and tries to figure out what the fuck he’s gonna do with an imprinted assassin.

When the Soldier disappears under the waves, diving clear into the sea, Clint has a moment to wonder if perhaps he doesn’t have to worry at all, because clearly the man has a motherfucking deathwish. But then he sees the Soldier surface farther out, swimming like it’s easy. Like the tide isn’t tossing angrily against the rocky shore, like the water isn’t sucking him down, like he isn’t freezing.

“What the fuck,” Clint mumbles to himself as the Soldier dives perfectly, gracefully, beneath the surface.

He tries to give the Soldier his hoodie on the walk back to his hotel but the Soldier just stares at it like he doesn’t know what it’s for.

“You swim like a fish,” Clint tells him when the silence grows awkward, as he unlocks the door to his room.

The Soldier just stares at him, unnerving and otherworldly, and follows him into the room.

*

Clint doesn’t know what he’s doing or how he ended up playing house with a world-famous assassin clearly suffering from PTSD.

So he feeds the Soldier and convinces him to sleep and does his best not to issue any orders, because he’s pretty sure the Soldier won’t say no to whatever he asks and Clint knows how much of a mindfuck it can be to have someone else making your choices for you.

So he doesn’t.

The Winter Soldier likes nature documentaries, especially ones involving oceans, eating pizza and popcorn, and napping. He isn’t much for talking. He has nightmares whenever he sleeps, which is only when Clint tells him to, and every day, he and Clint spend most of the daylight hours on the beach. The Soldier swims or walks the length of the coast, poking around in tide pools and quietly naming every creature he finds there.

Clint tries to give him his space. He doesn’t like to get too close, doesn’t like to speak too much, because the Soldier will do anything Clint tells him to do and Clint doesn’t want any sort of power like that over anyone.

As the days slip by, more and more of the robotic, mindless Soldier fades away and Clint isn’t sure what sort of man is left. The Soldier is quiet, introspective, prone to bouts of stillness that are almost supernatural. He follows Clint like a shadow, waiting for a mission, and sometimes Clint gives him one just to keep him busy.

The missions are things like sleep, shower, turn on the TV to whatever the Soldier wants to watch (it’s always a nature documentary). He sent him out for coffee once and decided not to do that again when the Soldier came back pale and clammy with anxiety. Sometimes he sends him to the beach, or asks him to bring back pretty stones he wants to keep, or to tell Clint the name of whatever creatures he found in the tide pools that day.

Having a mission, even a pointless one, seems to settle the Soldier in a way Clint doesn’t want to think about. Not after hearing the things the Soldier begs people to stop doing while he’s sleeping.

*

Clint isn’t a strong swimmer. There was never time for it, between the farm he grew up on, dodging his father’s rages, and trying to keep up with Barney who didn’t have much use for swimming. There weren’t any swimming lessons or swimming pools. And aside from sneaking away to the ocean that day in San Diego, the circus hadn’t left much room for fucking off and spending a day at the lake either.

Clint’s always felt his feet firmly planted on dry land, secure and safe, and he loved sitting on the shore, watching the ocean, but he’d never felt the need to go in the water. It’s too dark and too deep and he has no idea what’s under the surface.

But watching the Soldier, seeing the way the tension eases out of his shoulders the deeper he goes, Clint starts to wonder what it’s like, being that confident and secure in his body and his abilities, sinking beneath the waves entirely sure that he’ll make it up in time to breathe.

He wonders what it’s like, feeling suspended that way, pressed in on all sides by cold water. He wonders if maybe it’s more grounding than standing on the beach with the rocks under his feet.

So finally, after a week of watching the Soldier swim, on a calm night when the moon is bright and dancing on the surface of the black waves, Clint kicks off his shoes. He wiggles out of his jeans and pulls off his t-shirt and steps into the water.

It’s brutally cold and he sucks in a sharp breath but if the Soldier can walk into it like it’s easy, so can Clint.

It’s more of a frantic series of hops, yelping with every inch of water splashing up his calves, and Clint only stops when the water is lapping at his thighs. He’s pretty sure going any deeper will hurt like a bitch and he turns back to see how far he’s come.

It’s not really that far at all.

“Fuck,” he says, turning back to open water, trying to see where the Soldier has gone. He hasn’t seen him in a while and Clint stopped worrying about him drowning days ago.

He takes a deep breath and braces himself, throwing himself forward and sinking beneath the icy water.

He flails, scrambling, feet hitting the rocky bottom as he bursts back out of the water, heaving in gasping breaths and losing his balance. He falls back, waves tossing him a little bit, and when he catches his balance again, he can only barely touch the rocks below.

Grimly, with something to prove, he starts to swim.

He’s a fucking terrible swimmer.

He sinks below the surface half a dozen times before giving up, turning back for shore, but another wave sneaks up at him, knocking him forward and sucking him deeper.

Clint panics. He’d wondered what it would be like below the water, with dark quiet pressing in on all sides, and now that he’s experiencing it, all he knows is that he’s made a terrible, stupid mistake. His chest burns for breath and his mouth burns with salt and it’s so, so cold -- the moonlight is filtering through the water and it looks icy and blue like Loki’s magic and Clint is losing his shit and he’s going to drown and no one will ever notice.

The panic is becoming something sharp and visceral when the Soldier suddenly comes out of the shadows, swimming like some sort of deadly dolphin, slamming into Clint, shoulder to his chest and knocking what little air he’d managed to save straight out of his lungs. He drags Clint up to the surface and Clint sucks in a desperate, needy breath, aware only of the pain in his chest and in his lungs and a deep sort of gratitude as the Soldier tows him easily back to shore.

He lets go when they’re in the shallows, Clint sprawled gracelessly in water lapping around him, coughing and hacking up sea water while the Soldier sits in the water beside him, calm and wet and naked and pretty.

Clint hates him a little but also doesn’t hate him at all.

“I had that under control,” he says finally, voice hoarse from sea water.

“You sunk,” the Soldier says, bland. “Like a rock.”

Clint squints up at him. His eyes are burning with salt and he’s not sure, but was that a joke? A terrible joke?

“I’m a great swimmer,” Clint lies. “I was fine. I was -- I was weighed down by my clothes.”

The Soldier turns his head, looking down at Clint, letting his gaze wander from Clint’s naked chest to his boxers, wet and silky and clinging to every inch of him. 

“I’ve got a metal arm,” he says, gaze still lingering there and Clint, feeling unaccountably awkward, sits up so he can hide himself a little better. It backfires though, because now, they’re sitting so close, faces only inches apart, and that somehow feels more intimate than the Soldier’s eyes on his dick.

“Pretty sure Hydra engineered that thing to be buoyant,” Clint babbles, looking at the Soldier’s shoulder, where the metal plates catch the sunlight. “It’s practically a life preserver, an unfair advantage and--”

“I could teach you,” the Soldier says, and it’s so out of character, him making an offer rather than waiting for a mission, that Clint can’t help jerking his gaze back to the Soldier’s face.

“To swim?” he asks, some childhood yearning in his voice that he’s not great at hiding. He’d always loved water, always wanted to learn.

“If you want.” The Soldier shoves his wet hair out of his eyes, smoothing it back, unsure now and more human than he’s ever looked.

Maybe it’s because he’s so… naked. And wet. And bathed in silver moonlight, with salt water pooling in the hollow of his throat, and -- and -- and --

And making an offer instead of asking for an order is not good enough. He’s still a brainwashed super assassin who would probably let Clint do whatever he wanted to him if he knew Clint wanted to do it and Clint is not that kind of asshole.

Clint goes out of his way to kill that kind of asshole.

“I already know how to swim,” Clint says, a little shaky.

And the Soldier stands up, naked and backing into deeper water, and says, smooth and with the barest hint of amusement, “Prove it. I won’t let you drown.”

And Clint is fully capable of proving his swimming abilities -- the last twenty minutes notwithstanding -- without ogling the brainwashed and imprinted assassin who swims like a fish.

So he staggers after him, back into deeper water, much more confident now because he knows the Soldier will make sure he makes it back to shore.

He’ll probably be an asshole about it, but Clint’s finding he likes that about him.

*

It’s been a week when things go to shit. A strangely calm week spent on the beach and eating too much and learning about the ocean’s currents and the flora and fauna native to the temperate rainforests. The Soldier is teaching him to swim and it involves a bit too much touching but Clint is keeping it together.

Clint should have thought it through. He should have realized that Hydra wouldn’t want to lose their asset. He should have had a contingency plan to deal with it.

Natasha would have had at least three contingency plans.

But Clint. Well. The only plans Clint’s got are staggering which pizza shops he buys dinner from because he doesn’t need the judgement, thank you.

So when the Soldier sits up abruptly in the middle of the night, unnaturally still and staring at the window with – what the fuck, are his eyes shining like a cat’s?

Clint is so distracted by his eyes that it takes him a moment to register the soft sounds outside the door – someone is picking the lock.

The Soldier turns to blink slowly at Clint and then he’s on his feet, soundless and smooth, and palming the knife Clint let him keep.

“What the fuck,” Clint mouths, slipping off the bed and grabbing his bow and his arrows and taking shelter in the closet. The Soldier doesn’t bother with cover, just stands in the middle of the room, relaxed and waiting, flipping the knife in his hand.

The Soldier kills the first three Hydra operatives before Clint even gets an arrow nocked. Clint would be embarrassed about that, but to be fair, he’s too busy staring in shock at the quick and efficient way the Soldier takes them down to really remember the bow in his hands, and isn’t that saying something?

There are 12 operatives, which is overkill, Clint thinks, to retrieve an asset who has been nothing but entirely obedient in Clint’s experience. Overly-obedient. Frighteningly willing to obey.

They’re all cannon-fodder – barely trained and not up to the task of holding their own against the Soldier, clearly meant to be a distraction, to keep the Soldier busy while the scary-looking fellow in the fancy clothes, holding a beat up red journal, gets into the room and starts reading from his book.

Clint knows about brainwashing – magical and mechanical. He knows what trigger words are and he sees the way the Soldier’s hands fumble a little as the words start coming.

And sure. The Soldier has killed _most_ of the Hydra operatives. But Clint’s been holding his own, taking out a handful of them.

He doesn’t hesitate to shoot an arrow through the left eye of the dude with the book, killing him midway through whatever the next trigger word is, and after that, the Soldier has the remaining guys picked off moments later.

Which leaves a big fucking mess.

Clint quietly closes the door, though that locks him in a small room with too much fucking blood and death and the fresh sea air had been a welcome respite from that.

“Didn’t want to go back with your handlers?” he asks the Soldier, who’s cleaning his knife like he doesn’t care about the body count.

“They’re not my handlers anymore,” the Soldier says.

“Fair enough,” Clint says. “Because they’re kinda dead.”

They need to leave, obviously, so Clint starts shoving his things into his backpack. They haven’t got much – a few changes of clothes, a few kitschy souvenirs. He hesitates only a moment before shoving the red book into the bag as well, and then he surveys the mess.

He can’t, literally cannot, imagine leaving this mess for housekeeping. So reluctantly, Clint turns on the cell phone he let die last week and calls Tony.

“Can you send a clean up crew?” he asks, before Tony can really get started with his guilt trip designed to keep Clint on the phone long enough to track his number. Tony is predictable and hates when members of the team go off-grid for longer than a few hours.

“Clean up crew?” Tony asks, sounding intrigued. “What kind of mess did you make?”

“Blood,” Clint says, wrinkling his nose and nudging a body with his toe. “And a dozen bodies.”

There’s a beat of silence. “Twelve? You took out twelve people by yourself? Are you in some sort of trouble? Do you need back up? Should I get a suit ready? Romanov has been moody as fuck since you disappeared, she’s not going to be pleased if you get yourself killed because you refuse to ask for help, Barton.”

Clint looks at the Soldier, standing ready and waiting by the door, and says, “I’ve got backup. I’m fine. I’ll send you the address.”

He hangs up and waits until they’ve stolen a car and driven out of Wales entirely before texting Tony the address.

*

Hydra catches up to them again outside of London and then once more as they head north. The Soldier just kills them all methodically, one by one (and Clint, of course, does his fair share when he’s not too busy admiring the Soldier’s, uh, skill with a blade). But it’s not sustainable. And each time, they send more and more. And Clint’s starting to feel entirely too visible on this motherfucking island.

So they drive to the coast and steal a boat.

Clint’s not proud of it. Especially since he steals a pretty _nice_ boat. But he’s pretty sure Tony will help him out with paying for damages – or an entirely new boat – and it’s the only way, really. Besides, the Soldier seems calmer and less anxious when they’re near the water – he seems almost at home when they’re on it.

They drive slowly, lights off, until they’ve left all signs of land behind, and then speed off into the rising sun.

*

“It’s possible I didn’t think this through,” Clint says, standing at the prow of the ship, hands on his hips, shoulders burning in the bright sun. He squints at the horizon, searching for any hint of land.

“Gas would have been nice,” the Soldier agrees, almost lazy, and that’s another thing. The farther from land they get, the more human the Soldier acts, and Clint isn’t sure what to do with it. Also, he’s always wet and he’s wearing progressively less clothes with every passing hour and that’s entirely too much tanned, salty skin on display for Clint’s peace of mind.

Clint looks at him – a little longer than he should but not as long as he’d like. “We’ve gotta find land eventually.”

“Sure,” the Soldier says, and he doesn’t sound like he minds if they ever find land. He keeps leaping off the boat, swimming, disappearing beneath the surface, gone for so long, Clint’s given up worrying that he’s never coming back. He always does, somehow.

He seems more at home in the water than he does on the land, even with his metal arm which must weigh a goddamn ton.

Clint hates it. He hates everything – the sun, the Soldier’s broad shoulders, his face, his jaw, his stupid hair, his stomach and his back and his ass and his legs and his feet and goddamn it, everything in between. Clint hates this boat and he hates the rocking motion of the waves and he hates the scent of salt and burning skin. He hates drifting and he hates not having a cell phone signal and he hates that he didn’t even think about how much it would suck to run out of gas.

Mostly he hates that they ran out of chips three hours before because he’s hungry and when he gets hungry, he gets angry, and he hasn’t had a single sip of coffee in over an entire day.

“I swear to fuck, I’m good at boats,” Clint says. The Soldier doesn’t look like he believes him. 

*

A few hours slip by and Clint has ransacked the cabin of the boat but found nothing useful besides a lifejacket that won’t fit over his shoulders, half a bottle of stale water and an expired box of crackers. He considers eating them but they’re starting to mold so he sticks them back in the closet with a moan because he’s going to die of starvation or exposure, lost at sea with the Winter Soldier and Nat will never find him.

The sun is starting to go down and it’s taking the heat with it. The day had been almost unbearably hot but it’s already getting chilly without the light reflecting up off the water.

Clint flops back down on the deck and throws both arms up over his face and says, “We’re both going to starve and it’s my fault. Sorry about that.”

The Soldier has been calm this entire time, peaceful, like being surrounded by water with no way to land isn’t the stuff of nightmares. Like the rocking of the waves is soothing him in ways Clint never could on land.

“D’you like fish?” The Soldier asks, lazy and half asleep, arching his back a little as he stretches from the place he’d been sunbathing.

“Fish?” Clint echoes, because he’s not a fan but he’s hungry enough to consider anything at the moment. “There aren’t any fishing rods. I checked the whole boat.”

The Soldier just sits up and fucking smiles, a slow sort of smirk that’s honestly one of the hottest things Clint’s ever seen and now is a ridiculous time to be developing a crush.

It’s just, the Soldier hasn’t done anything but glower and look stoic and uncomfortable since he appeared in that thunderstorm and waited for Clint to kill him. Seeing that smile, and the way the sun and the sea settled something in his shoulders, it’s just… it’s a really good look on him.

And then the Soldier slips off the boat, smooth and sleek and disappears under the surface of the water like it’s easy and Clint just. Stares for a moment. Because there’s no fucking way –

The Soldier is back a minute later, tossing a shining, flopping fish up onto the deck before pulling himself up with both hands, sliding back into the boat with a frankly impressive display of muscle – he’s wet and glistening in the setting sun and Clint isn’t sure when the Soldier lost most of his clothes, but – who is he kidding, he catalogued each careful removal of clothing and he’s not ever going to forget.

But the fish. The fish is what he needs to focus on now.

He worries he’s going delirious with heat stroke, dehydration, hunger. He stares at the fish and says, “Did you seriously just catch that with your hands?”

The Soldier shrugs, getting to his feet – drops of salt water run from his slicked-back hair, down his back, glittering like diamonds – and he says, easy, “Fish are predictable. They always make the same choices.”

Like that explains anything at all.

*

They start a fire on deck, using the red book of trigger words as fire starter, and roast the fish over it because the little kitchen below deck won’t work. Clint feels a bit bad about the scorch marks they leave but at the same time, he’s beginning to resent the fact that the owners of this boat didn’t keep it stocked up for emergencies like helping the reprobates who stole it survive being lost at sea.

It’s dark when the fish is done and Clint huddles close to the fire for warmth as he eats handfuls of fish.

“Should we keep the fire burning?” Clint asks. “For warmth? And maybe someone’ll see it and rescue us.”

The Soldier looks at him and says, “If the boat catches on fire, you’re fucked.”

He says ‘you’re’ like Clint’s the only one who would be fucked but Clint takes the point and they put out the fire. The only light left is the weak glow of a lantern Clint found below deck.

It’s cold and Clint considers going below deck in hopes that it might be warmer, but he’s growing claustrophobic with so much water all around, the idea of going below the surface – even in a boat – makes his breath catch and tremble in a way that will become a full-scale panic attack if he’s not careful.

So Clint rummages in his backpack and finds every bit of clothing he’s got, putting it on. It’s not a lot – jeans and a t-shirt and a hoodie and two pairs of socks – but he does his best.

And then his fingers brush against something incredibly soft, balled up at the very bottom of his backpack.

Across from him, he hears the Soldier take a sudden, shaky breath, but Clint is too busy pulling it out to really register it.

It’s the fur, he remembers suddenly. The one he’d found in that Hydra compound and taken and promptly forgotten all about.

It had seemed ragged then, forgotten and dusty and old. Now, as he runs the palm of his hand across it, it feels incredibly soft and lush, almost alive. And so fucking warm.

He pulls it up around his shoulders, wrapping it around himself against the chilly breeze, and closes his eyes with a soft, grateful moan. It warms him almost instantly and Clint curls up underneath it, his hands stroking the fur, smoothing it, burying his fingers in it as he grows sleepy, cozy and satisfied and thinking that maybe dying like this, warm and soft, is better than any of his other options. He’s not bleeding, he’s not begging, he’s not hurting. It’s just drifting off to sleep.

And then, as his eyes flutter shut, he realizes he can hear the Soldier’s breathing.

It’s gone heavier than he’s used to, like the Soldier’s already asleep and having a nightmare, but when Clint turns his head, he sees the Soldier’s eyes shining like a cat’s in the lantern light.

He’s on his back, still mostly naked, his skin glittering with sea salt, his eyes wide and staring up at the starry sky. His chest is heaving with his breaths which are heavy and shaking.

Clint wonders if the Soldier is cold and if he is, why hasn’t he put his clothing on?

And then Clint twists his hands in the fur around his shoulders, tugging it a little without thinking, and the Soldier arches his back, just a little, and his breath catches in his throat with a desperate, confused whine.

Clint goes very still. The Soldier sinks back to the deck and keeps panting.

And Clint figures he must be very cold to make an almost pained sound like that.

“Hey,” Clint says and his voice sounds thick, drugged with sleep and warmth. “Hey, d’you have a name?”

Maybe it’s late to be asking. It just feels like calling him ‘the Soldier’ when they’re about to die together is a little disingenuous.

The Soldier turns his head, slow, to meet Clint’s gaze, and says, aching and careful, like the name is unfamiliar on his tongue, “Bucky, I think.”

“Bucky,” Clint echoes, taking the fur from his shoulders, bundling it up carefully while Bucky watches him with dark eyes. “Bucky. Hey, Bucky, are you cold?”

And then he holds the fur out to Bucky even though something about it makes him want to snatch it back and keep it.

Bucky doesn’t take it. He just stares and he’s not breathing hard anymore – he’s barely breathing at all.

“You’re cold,” Bucky says, soft. “Keep it.”

“So are you. And you’re all…” he can’t help running his gaze over Bucky’s shoulders and chest, shining in the lantern light, and Clint swallows hard, cheeks flushing. “Barely dressed. Take it. It’s warm.”

Bucky hesitates for another moment and says, voice rough, “I’ll do just about anything you tell me to.”

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? Clint wants Bucky to choose, he wants Bucky to admit that he wants more than just to be by the sea -- he wants Bucky to want to reach out and take the fur, to reach out and take Clint’s hand, to reach out and take and take and take because Clint’s kinda thinking he’ll give him anything he wants to have.

But instead, Bucky just reaches out with shaking fingers and all he takes is the fur. The moment he touches the fur, his fingers burying in it and twisting, holding tight, there’s something – something indescribable, a thrill of something almost electric that runs through Clint, that echoes through him and bounces from nerve to nerve, pooling in the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet and he can feel it, somehow, doing the same in Bucky.

It makes no sense but somehow it feels inevitable, and Bucky takes the skin in both hands – metal shining dull while the other glitters like stars – and for a long moment, Bucky doesn’t breathe at all.

And then when he finally exhales, he looks up at Clint with eyes wide and dark like the sea and breathes, “ _Oh._ Oh. I _remember_.”

It feels like they’re touching though they aren’t, like they’re holding hands though Bucky’s hands are both clutching the skin and Clint’s are curled up, helpless, on the deck of the boat.

“What do you remember?” Clint asks him, quiet, but there’s a moment, an endless moment, where Bucky just stares at him and then looks around like a wild thing, at the starry sky and the boat and the ocean waves shifting beneath them.

And then he’s gone, slipping over the side of the boat while Clint scrambles to catch him, to hold him, to figure out what the fuck is happening.

But Bucky is gone, barely leaving a ripple, and Clint sits awake waiting for him to come back until dawn, but Bucky doesn’t.

And the thing is, Clint would swear… he would _swear_ that Bucky wasn’t human when he hit the water.

But the lantern light was weak and the ocean waves were restless and Clint isn’t sure he really saw what he thought he saw.

It’s just, he’s always had better vision than most.

He’s half convinced Bucky’s never coming back and half convinced that he’ll somehow reappear with the sun.

But all that happens is Tony Stark appears on the horizon, coming to the rescue.

And even as the quinjet takes off with Clint on board, he watches the surface of the ocean below for any sign.

And there’s nothing. Bucky is gone.

*

“You want to explain yourself, Barton?” Tony asks. The jet is halfway home and Clint feels sick and anxious, like he left someone behind, but he hasn’t got the words to explain the last few weeks.

Natasha’s there because there’s no way she’d let anyone else come to his rescue without her, and she says, “Drop it, Tony.”

“What,” Tony asks, rolling his eyes. “You’re not curious? Barton disappears from an incredibly secure private island, is in the wind for weeks, kills two dozen Hydra operatives, and reappears lost at sea on a boat I’m going to have to pay for and you’re not a little curious?”

Natasha is watching Clint and she knows him too well. He’s trying to hide his anxiety, trying to keep still, he’s not pacing or fidgeting or doing any of the things he used to do when he was nervous and younger, things Natasha taught him not to do.

But she’s always known his tells and she says, quiet, “He’ll tell us when he’s ready.”

Because she’s always had his back as well.

*

The tower is strange, after a few weeks of living in a moody seaside town, and then hours spent adrift at sea. They’re high above the New York smog but the air still feels dirty and difficult to breathe. He misses his days being dictated by whatever weather decided to blow in off the Atlantic, misses spending hours on the beach, watching the tide come in and out and learning about nature from both the shitty hotel TV and whatever Bucky decided to tell him about the creatures, the currents, navigating by the stars and the tides.

It’s too quiet and too still and Clint thought he’d gotten used to quiet and still with Bucky.

But Bucky is gone and Clint thinks maybe he drowned but some part of him – the part that watched Bucky play in the waves like he was more at home in water than on land – doesn’t think that’s the way Bucky dies. He doesn’t drown. He can’t. It makes no sense at all but the other options make even less.

So he researches. He Googles whatever he can think of and, when that returns some frankly unbelievable results, he charms Jarvis into hacking into SHIELD servers for him because Jarvis has always been a good friend who approves of Clint trying to better himself through education and life-long learning.

He pulls up every file he can find on the Winter Soldier and there isn’t much.

So he gets drunk and he finds Natasha and asks for her help instead. It takes her contact in Moscow three days to come back with a file and she tells Clint he doesn’t want to read it but he reads it anyway.

And then he drinks even more.

He’d known whatever Hydra had done to create the Winter Soldier hadn’t been kind. Bucky’s nightmares had been enough to prove that to him. Clint’s woken up screaming enough times himself to know what sort of torture leaves marks that run that deep.

But he hadn’t imagined this. Bucky had spoken of cryo, of recalibrations and intravenous feedings and missions but Clint had done his best not to imagine what that looked like.

The file has photos and USB sticks with videos and Clint needs an entire additional bottle of vodka to forget the things he’s seen.

He only skims the written parts. He just can’t stomach it.

But the written parts don’t say anything at all about Bucky’s love of the sea. His ability to catch fish with his hands because fish make predictable choices. It doesn’t mention the strange animal skin either, or the way Bucky had abandoned his handlers and imprinted on Clint just about the same time he found and stole it from a forgotten room in a Hydra stronghold.

So Clint goes back to those unbelievable Google results and reads them again and then goes to find Natasha.

If anyone would know about unbelievable things, she would.

He finds her in the lounge, stretched out on a recliner in a sunspot, wearing yoga pants and one of Clint’s old t-shirts, hair piled on top of her head and nose buried in a romance novel, and he flops down on the couch beside her.

Steve’s nearby, cooking a superhuman amount of pancakes, and Clint lets his head fall back against the back of the couch, lets it roll so he’s looking at Natasha who’s watching him patiently, and says, “You know anything about selkies?”

Steve drops the bowl of pancake batter and it makes an awful mess.

Clint helps him clean it up because he’s feeling generous and Steve honestly looks like he’s seen a ghost, and they’re both on their hands and knees scooping batter back into the bowl when Steve says quietly, “Bucky was a selkie.”

And now it’s Clint feeling like he’s seen a motherfucking ghost. “Bucky?” he echoes, and Steve looks up at him with bright, tragic eyes.

“Bucky Barnes,” Steve says. “Best man I ever knew. My best friend, back in – my whole life.” He looks away and Clint is struggling to breathe, thinking maybe he ought to have read that file a little more closely, and then Steve says, “He died in the war.”

Did he though? Did he die? Because now that Steve’s mentioned it, Clint’s brain is hysterically piecing things together, things he learned in the few history classes he bothered going to, in a few wartime documentaries he watched when he was a kid, back when Barney was into WWII history and idolizing Captain America.

“Steve,” Clint says, trying to stay calm. “What the fuck.”

Steve ducks his head and shrugs his shoulders and says, “No one else knows about it. It was – I was a kid and I was pretty much dying so Ma put all her savings together for a summer out on the coast. To clear my lungs. I spent just about every day on the beach because the salt made the air easier to breathe –”

“It does that,” Clint says, still feeling hysterical. Selkies aren’t real but damned if Bucky hadn’t looked more seal than man when he hit the water that night.

Steve shoots him a look like they’re sharing a moment of understanding but there’s nothing about this that Clint understands. And Natasha is still watching them, watching Clint, thoughtful with a finger marking her place in her book.

“And one day, while I was on the beach, I found a boy, a little older than me, and he asked if I wanted to learn to swim.” Steve shrugs, looking far away and he’s forgotten all about the pancake batter on the floor. “Ma hadn’t let me in the water,” he says. “Kept me on shore, wrapped up in blankets in the heat to protect my skin from the sun. But Bucky, he didn’t give a shit that sometimes it was hard to breathe because I was swimming too hard or laughing too hard. Just waited for me to catch my breath and then dunked me again. Eventually… eventually he told me what he was and I didn’t believe him so he showed me.” He looks down at his hands, the drying pancake batter, and says, lost, “Hard to argue when you see it.”

Clint’s been arguing since he saw it days ago.

“We were inseparable that summer and at the end, he gave me his skin because said he wanted to come with me and asked me to keep it secret and safe and I did. We went back to New York. And then he went off to war some years later and I wanted to go too but you know that story. So I kept it safe for him, and when I finally got there, I brought it with me, and when – and when he died, I still had it, I still kept it safe.”

He trails off, lost in his own awful memories, but Clint… Clint is just hung up on a few details. “You – you kept him?” he asks, voice shaking with fury, because that’s the thing all the myths he’s read, that’s the thing they all say. When you take away a selkie’s skin, you take away their choice.

“He gave it to me,” Steve says, shaking his head. “It was the only way he could stay with me. I’d have given it back if he wanted to go, of course I would have. But he wanted –”

“And then you left it behind,” Clint accuses, sitting back on his heels, trying to get away from Steve because if he doesn’t, he’s gonna try to hit him and he knows he doesn’t stand a chance in a fist fight against Captain America. “You let Hydra get it.”

“I went into the ice,” Steve says. “I couldn’t possibly –”

“You _let Hydra get it_.”

Steve’s mouth gapes open but he doesn’t seem able to find any words, and it’s Natasha who asks quietly, “How do you know Hydra had it?”

Clint scrambles to his feet and says, desperate, “Because I found it. Two months ago. I found it and I didn’t know what it was and I stole it and I carried it around in my fucking backpack and forgot it was fucking there!”

Steve gets up too, his entire face lighting up, and he says, “You _found_ it? You have it? It’s the only thing left of Bucky, can I –”

“They found him too,” Clint says, harsh, backing away. “You lost the skin and you lost Bucky and you let Hydra have them both.”

“What do you mean?” Steve asks, reaching out for him. “Clint –”

But Clint can’t handle it, doesn’t want to, so he says to Natasha, “Give him the file. I can’t – I need to get out of here.”

“Clint –” Steve says, but Natasha lets him go.

He doesn’t bother packing a bag at all this time, just hops a plane to the UK.

*

Clint finds himself back in that same village, which is dreary and rainy and moody, which is just how he’s feeling. He’s not brave enough to book himself a room in the same hotel he bloodied up, though Tony’s clean up crews always do a phenomenal job, so he gets a room overlooking the rocky beach.

It’s something like torture but part of him feels like he deserves the pain.

It’s all too easy to spend the next few days with the shutters open, sitting near the window high enough to get a view of the entire stretch of beach that he and Bucky explored, and he tells himself he’s not looking for anything specific, not waiting for anyone in particular, but hell.

Clint’s always been a terrible liar, even when lying to himself.

He doesn’t leave it at just waiting at the window like a widow waiting for her sailor husband to come back after he was lost at sea. He walks the beach too, skirting around the ebbs and flows of the tide to follow the paths he imagined he walked a thousand times with Bucky, learning about different species of snails and crabs and sea anemones.

It was only a few weeks but the impact it had on him seems limitless and Clint hates it. He doesn’t know how to mourn something he never really had -- it was the possibility that’s gone that burns in his gut.

His options are a) Bucky jumped overboard and drowned and he’ll never see him again or B) Bucky was a magical selkie who transformed into a seal and disappeared into the water and Clint will still never see him again. 

The thing about selkies -- the one thing that all the myths have in common -- is that a selkie gets trapped on land when their skin is stolen away but they spend their entire lives longing for the sea and if they ever get the chance, they return to it and abandon anyone they happen to love.

Clint isn’t arrogant enough to think that the awkward half-friendship he formed with Bucky was anything approaching love. And if love isn’t enough to bring a selkie back after he’d been kept against his will and tortured and forced to kill, then a few weeks of sharing beachcombing adventures and nature documentaries with a dumpster fire like Clint definitely wasn’t.

But the possibility lingers. And Clint can’t seem to shake it.

So he walks up and down the beach and tosses stones in the gray, shifting waves and he squints out to sea and the most exciting thing that ever happens is when he finds a crab scuttling along and knows what kind it is and he only knows that because Bucky told him.

So Clint gives up and flops down on the muddy, rocky, wet beach and covers his face with both arms and just… gives in to the loss he doesn’t think he’s got a right to feel.

He lets it wash over him like the tide rolling in and he breathes through it and he thinks about packing up and packing it in and catching a plane back home. His phone’s been blowing up with Natasha, Steve and Tony demanding to know what he knows about the Winter Soldier and giving him a few day’s grace before they track him down again and force him to come clean and it’s just. He’s not sure how to say “Yeah, Cap, your BFF is alive and was tortured for decades and I found him and set him free and he’s not ever coming back, sorry about that, except I’m not, not really, because fuck you.”

He moans and then, and then, and then. He hears seals barking down the beach.

Clint sits up so quickly, he almost sprains something, shading his eyes with one hand and peering down the beach, scrambling to his feet when he doesn’t see anything. He follows the sound, picking his way carefully over the rocks as they grow larger and sharper.

He finds a few seals stretched out on a rock with sea foam crashing all around, flapping their flippers and barking at each other, jostling for the comfiest spots as if the sun is actually shining brightly enough to bathe in it.

And Clint only feels half as stupid as he should when he cups his hands around his mouth and calls, “Uh, hey, Bucky? Is that you?”

The seals just turn to stare at him, two of them slipping into the water and disappearing but one tipping his head and looking confused and curious and it’s not Bucky. It’s probably not Bucky. But Clint’s kinda out of options here so he shouts, “If -- if you know Bucky, can you just tell him that I’d love to see him? Please? I’ll wait here on the beach. Okay?”

The seal just blinks and then hops into the water and it’s gone.

Clint wonders if it’s gone to deliver his message but it probably hasn’t.

He forgets his plan to go home and stays another week, walking the beach and keeping an eye out for seals.

The days stretch by and Bucky doesn’t show up and Clint’s lost his mind. Of course selkies aren’t real. Of course Bucky’s not coming back. Of course, of course, of course.

*

It’s a Wednesday evening and Clint’s been in Wales for three weeks on his own now and he’s starting to lose it, if he ever had it.

Natasha is keeping Steve off his back, off on some international manhunt, searching for Bucky like they’ve got a chance in hell of finding him. And Clint is just here. Lost. Just as lost as Bucky, maybe. Or maybe more.

He can’t stand his hotel room, can’t stand scanning the channels aimlessly searching for something other than nature documentaries. He can’t stomach another take out meal eaten sitting on the edge of the bed that’s too hard or not hard enough or too itchy or just not right. 

So the sun goes down and the shadows on the beach grow long and dark and Clint just doesn’t go back to his room.

The moon is full tonight and the sea is calmer than it’s ever been, soft and gentle like a mirror, reflecting the moon and the stars and the silvery clouds that slide across them both.

He’s found a rock that fits his ass just right and he sits there, elbows braced on his knees, staring down as the ocean waves rush up a little closer to his bare feet with each exhale before slipping away, pulling a shower of water-rounded pebbles dancing down the beach with them.

It’s like breathing and it helps because Clint hasn’t felt able to take a deep breath in weeks.

The water is just licking at his ankles when Bucky says, wary and quiet and not too far away, “Tell me to do something.”

Clint sucks in a startled breath so fast, he starts coughing, nearly falling off his rock in his hurry to stand up, staggering as another wave washes up and over his feet.

Bucky’s standing there, silhouetted by the moon and entirely naked except for the fur he’s got carefully draped around his shoulders. The moonlight is brushing silver highlights in his hair, along his cheekbones and his shoulders, glittering in the salt water running off his body. And Clint’s been waiting for him for weeks but never thought he’d actually see him again.

“Bucky,” he breathes, and Bucky takes a step closer, water rushing at his feet.

“Tell me to do something,” he says again, with more urgency.

Clint swallows and holds his hands out plaintively and says, “Go away. Back into the sea where you came from.”

Bucky smiles, slow, and Clint can see it in the way the moonlight washes over his face, and says, “No.”

Clint grins like an idiot, beaming at him and wanting to ask so many questions but they all get tangled on his tongue. All he manages is, “Do you remember? Do you know who you are?”

“Sergeant Bucky Barnes,” he says, solemn. “325570. From Brooklyn, New York. And… and the sea, before that.”

He comes closer and Clint wonders if he should take off his sweater, offer it to Bucky, but Bucky doesn’t seem bothered to be naked at all. Clint wishes it was brighter, so he could see better and his cheeks burn at the intrusive thought.

“I didn’t know if you’d come back,” Clint says and Bucky rolls his eyes.

“Wasn’t gonna come walking up on the beach bare naked in the middle of the day, Barton,” he says. “Children play on this beach.”

“Oh,” Clint says blankly. “You’re naked? I hadn’t noticed.”

“Sure,” Bucky says, voice slipping low. He comes closer. “I remember other things too. Like Steve and the Howling Commandos and the war.” He sounds a little distant now, even as he’s coming closer and the water’s growing slowly deeper around them. “I remember falling, and -- and everything that came after.” 

“You don’t have to talk about that,” Clint tells him, reaching out but letting his hand fall before he touches because he’s not sure he’s allowed, not sure Bucky wants it.

“I remember living with Steve,” Bucky confesses, quiet. “Before the war. And wanting -- wanting this, but pretending I didn’t. But I don’t remember this part, not as well as I should.”

“Which part?” Clint asks, barely a whisper, licking his lips, voice cracking because Bucky touches his face, barely a graze of his fingertips along Clint’s jaw.

“This one,” Bucky says and then he’s kissing Clint, sweet and careful. It tastes like sea salt and Clint feels it all the way to the soles of his feet, the way he felt it when Bucky took the skin from him, the electricity that pooled under his skin.

The tide is pushing and pulling at Clint’s legs and he blames that for the way his balance is suddenly off -- it’s not because of the kiss, even if the entire world feels upside down and yet somehow, perfectly the way it’s supposed to be.

So Clint slides his hands up Bucky’s damp chest, around his shoulders, tangling his fingers in the fur of seal skin there, and Bucky reacts instantly, arching against him and breaking the kiss with a shaky moan.

“Can you feel that?” Clint asks him, soft, holding Bucky close when it seems Bucky’s the one having trouble staying on his feet this time.

“Yeah,” Bucky breathes, as Clint runs his fingers gently, gently, through the fur, smoothing it and soothing Bucky, pretending he can’t feel the way Bucky trembles when he hides his face against the side of Clint’s neck.

“I didn’t think you’d come back,” Clint confesses, still whispering, like saying it too loudly would break whatever spell this is.

Bucky lifts his head and says, “You set me free. You gave me back to the sea. You gave me back everything.”

“Even more reason not to come back,” Clint says and Bucky shakes his head, slow.

“Not how I see it,” Bucky tells him, lifting his head, leaving his hands on Clint’s shoulders, like he needs to hold onto something. Clint can feel his hands shaking. “I want to remember more. I remember the sea and Steve but I remember everything Hydra made me do and the bad I remember outweighs the good. And I thought.” He hesitates, voice trailing off, sounding lost. “The things I remember with you -- Planet Earth and teaching you to swim and learning who I could be when I’m with you -- those are good things. And maybe if I could be with you again, maybe someday, the good with you will outweigh all the bad from before. Do you think we could be good?”

That ball of pain and loss that’s been sitting on his gut for weeks is still there, heavy and suffocating, but Clint feels something in his chest start to relax, even as a crazy, lopsided grin grows on his face. He says, “We could be _so_ good, Bucky. There’s so much good and I’ll show you all of it.”

Bucky cups Clint’s face with both hands, leaving dried sea salt along his cheekbones, and he says, “And I’ll teach you to swim. Your form is terrible.”

“Hey,” Clint says, and he’s full-out laughing now, stumbling away from Bucky but holding tightly to his hand, pulling him towards the shore and his hotel room and his phone. “I told you, I’m a fantastic swimmer, I was weighed down by my clothes!”

“Sure you are,” Bucky says, letting Clint tug him out of the sea, following him gamely onto the beach. “We ought to call Steve. He’s probably -- he’s probably a wreck.”

Clint freezes, looking back at Bucky. Clint’s on the beach now, no water washing over his feet but Bucky’s still deeper and Clint can’t believe -- can’t believe he was literally pulling Bucky out of the sea this way.

“Do you want to come with me?” Clint says. “I don’t want to keep you from the sea, I don’t want to do what they did, what Steve and Hydra did, and I--”

Bucky steps out of the water easily and presses a sweet kiss to Clint’s lips and says, “Steve never took me anywhere I didn’t want to go, I’d follow that punk into hell and back and still would. And there’s a big difference between being kept and going willingly and I’m more than willing to follow wherever you wanna go, Barton.”

“You want to come with me?” Clint asks again, because he can’t quite believe it.

Bucky looks back over his shoulder at the ocean behind him and says, “I’ll come back, whenever I want to, and I’ll bring you with me.” He turns back and smiles at Clint, eyes wide and dark and hair slicked back and glittering and says, “Lead the way.”

So Clint holds tightly to his hand and leads the way over the sharp rocks to the softer sand and then, keeping to the shadows because Bucky is still very, very naked, they climb up the back way to Clint’s room.

There, they call Steve and they turn on a nature documentary and they curl up together and when they kiss, it tastes like sea water and all the possibilities Clint had been mourning only hours before.

The End


End file.
